- Maker#39;s Schedule, Manager#39;s Schedule
- Microsoft Yahoo Deal Likely This Week: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance
July 29, 2009
July 28, 2009
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July 29, 2009
Shared Items – July 29, 2009
Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal: The Official Press Release
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
July 28, 2009
Microsoft Yahoo Deal Likely This Week: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance
July 27, 2009
Coolness: Amazon’s Acquisitions and Investments, Visualized
Google’s thin client distraction
Apple’s Tablet Is The Kindle In Technicolor (With Laser Beams)
New Barcode Technology from MIT
Shared Items – July 27, 2009
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Shared Items – July 29, 2009
Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal: The Official Press Release
Posted at TechCrunch
by Robin Wauters
Microsoft and Yahoo have now officially announced the search deal that has been rumored for long and finally confirmed by us and other news outlets yesterday evening.
Official press release (emphasis ours apart from title and subtitles):
Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape
Global Deal Creates Better Choice for Consumers and Advertisers
SUNNYVALE, CA and REDMOND, WA — 29 July, 2009 — Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies’ complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft’s competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.
Under this agreement, Yahoo! will focus on its core business of providing consumers with great experiences with the world’s favorite online destinations and Web products.
“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. “Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides. Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities, and mobile experiences.”
Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search. With the addition of Yahoo!’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the agreement will provide Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.
“Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Ballmer. “Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”
“This deal fits the long-term strategic direction of Yahoo! to remain the world’s leading online media company and Carol Bartz has the full and unanimous support of the Yahoo! Board behind this deal,” said Roy Bostock, chairman, Yahoo! Inc. “This is a significant opportunity for us. Microsoft is an industry innovator in search, and it is a great opportunity for us to focus our investments in other areas critical to our future.”
The key terms of the agreement are as follows:
- The term of the agreement is 10 years;
- Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;
Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
- Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.
- Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
- Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.
- Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
- Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.
- Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
- Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
- At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.
The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.
The agreement does not cover each company’s web properties and products, email, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses. In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously.
The transaction will be subject to regulatory review. The agreement entered into today anticipates that the parties will enter into more detailed definitive agreements prior to closing. Microsoft and Yahoo! expect the agreement to be closely reviewed by the industry and government regulators, and welcome questions. The companies are hopeful that closing can occur in early 2010.
The companies have established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement.
Conference Call – 5:30 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, July 29
Yahoo! and Microsoft will host a conference call with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss the agreement at 5:30 a.m. Pacific/8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today.
To listen to the call, please dial 1-866-515-2908 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-399-5122 international, reservation number: 47968026. A live webcast of the call can be accessed through Yahoo!’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/results.cfm.
The companies have also established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement. In addition, an archive of the webcast will be available through the same link. An audio replay of the call will be available for two weeks following the conference call by calling 1-888-286-8010 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-801-6888 international, reservation number: 91217610.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
This release refers to operating cash flow (operating income before depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, and stock-based compensation expense, or OCF), which is a non-GAAP financial measure. The most comparable GAAP measure is income from operations. The estimated annual OCF benefit of $275 million included in this press release is the estimated annual benefit in income from operations of $500 million less approximately $225 million of estimated annual savings in depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation expense.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Posted at TechCrunch
by Robin Wauters
Microsoft and Yahoo have now officially announced the search deal that has been rumored for long and finally confirmed by us and other news outlets yesterday evening.
Official press release (emphasis ours apart from title and subtitles):
Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape
Global Deal Creates Better Choice for Consumers and AdvertisersSUNNYVALE, CA and REDMOND, WA — 29 July, 2009 — Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies’ complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft’s competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.
Under this agreement, Yahoo! will focus on its core business of providing consumers with great experiences with the world’s favorite online destinations and Web products.“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. “Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides. Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities, and mobile experiences.”
Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search. With the addition of Yahoo!’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the agreement will provide Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.“Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Ballmer. “Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”
“This deal fits the long-term strategic direction of Yahoo! to remain the world’s leading online media company and Carol Bartz has the full and unanimous support of the Yahoo! Board behind this deal,” said Roy Bostock, chairman, Yahoo! Inc. “This is a significant opportunity for us. Microsoft is an industry innovator in search, and it is a great opportunity for us to focus our investments in other areas critical to our future.”
The key terms of the agreement are as follows:
- The term of the agreement is 10 years;
- Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;
Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.- Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.
- Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
- Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.
- Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
- Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.
- Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
- Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
- At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.
The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.
The agreement does not cover each company’s web properties and products, email, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses. In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously.
The transaction will be subject to regulatory review. The agreement entered into today anticipates that the parties will enter into more detailed definitive agreements prior to closing. Microsoft and Yahoo! expect the agreement to be closely reviewed by the industry and government regulators, and welcome questions. The companies are hopeful that closing can occur in early 2010.
The companies have established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement.
Conference Call – 5:30 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, July 29
Yahoo! and Microsoft will host a conference call with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss the agreement at 5:30 a.m. Pacific/8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today.To listen to the call, please dial 1-866-515-2908 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-399-5122 international, reservation number: 47968026. A live webcast of the call can be accessed through Yahoo!’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/results.cfm.
The companies have also established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement. In addition, an archive of the webcast will be available through the same link. An audio replay of the call will be available for two weeks following the conference call by calling 1-888-286-8010 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-801-6888 international, reservation number: 91217610.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
This release refers to operating cash flow (operating income before depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, and stock-based compensation expense, or OCF), which is a non-GAAP financial measure. The most comparable GAAP measure is income from operations. The estimated annual OCF benefit of $275 million included in this press release is the estimated annual benefit in income from operations of $500 million less approximately $225 million of estimated annual savings in depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation expense.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
Posted at www.paulgraham.com
July 2009
One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re ona different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost themmore.
There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’sschedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is forbosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, witheach day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off severalhours for a single task if you need to, but by default you changewhat you’re doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meetwith someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, andyou’re done.
Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s theschedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’scommon among people who make things, like programmers and writers.They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least.You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barelyenough time to get started.
When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are adisaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breakingit into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus youhave to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someoneon the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on thenext hour; the only question is what. But when someone on themaker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is likethrowing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch fromone task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meetingcommonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning orafternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect.If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly lesslikely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know thismay sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your owncase. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entireday free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that meansyour spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. Andambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of yourcapacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise whenthey meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’sschedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at theirfrequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves,if they know that some of the people working for them need longchunks of time to work in.
Our case is an unusual one. Nearly all investors, including allVCs I know, operate on the manager’s schedule. But Y Combinatorruns on the maker’s schedule. Rtm and Trevor and I do because wealways have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she’s gotteninto sync with us.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there start to be more companies likeus. I suspect founders may increasingly be able to resist, or atleast postpone, turning into managers, just as a few decades agothey started to be able to resist switching from jeansto suits.
How do we manage to advise so many startups on the maker’s schedule?By using the classic device for simulating the manager’s schedulewithin the maker’s: office hours. Several times a week I set asidea chunk of time to meet founders we’ve funded. These chunks oftime are at the end of my working day, and I wrote a signup programthat ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hoursare clustered at the end. Because they come at the end of my daythese meetings are never an interruption. (Unless their workingday ends at the same time as mine, the meeting presumably interruptstheirs, but since they made the appointment it must be worth it tothem.) During busy periods, office hours sometimes get long enoughthat they compress the day, but they never interrupt it.
When we were working on our own startup, back in the 90s, I evolvedanother trick for partitioning the day. I used to program fromdinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one couldinterrupt me. Then I’d sleep till about 11 am, and come in andwork until dinner on what I called “business stuff.” I never thoughtof it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day,one on the manager’s schedule and one on the maker’s.
When you’re operating on the manager’s schedule you can do somethingyou’d never want to do on the maker’s: you can have speculativemeetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another.If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it willturn out you can help one another in some way.
Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for thatmatter) have speculative meetings all the time. They’re effectivelyfree if you’re on the manager’s schedule. They’re so common thatthere’s distinctive language for proposing them: saying that youwant to “grab coffee,” for example.
Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you’re on the maker’sschedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyoneassumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager’s schedule.So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, orsend us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we havetwo options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and losehalf a day’s work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probablyoffend them.
Till recently we weren’t clear in our own minds about the sourceof the problem. We just took it for granted that we had to eitherblow our schedules or offend people. But now that I’ve realizedwhat’s going on, perhaps there’s a third option: to write somethingexplaining the two types of schedule. Maybe eventually, if theconflict between the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedulestarts to be more widely understood, it will become less of aproblem.
Those of us on the maker’s schedule are willing to compromise. Weknow we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from thoseon the manager’s schedule is that they understand the cost.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston,and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
Posted at www.paulgraham.com
July 2009
One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re ona different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost themmore.
There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’sschedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is forbosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, witheach day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off severalhours for a single task if you need to, but by default you changewhat you’re doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meetwith someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, andyou’re done.
Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s theschedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’scommon among people who make things, like programmers and writers.They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least.You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barelyenough time to get started.
When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are adisaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breakingit into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus youhave to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someoneon the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on thenext hour; the only question is what. But when someone on themaker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is likethrowing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch fromone task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meetingcommonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning orafternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect.If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly lesslikely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know thismay sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your owncase. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entireday free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that meansyour spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. Andambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of yourcapacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise whenthey meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’sschedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at theirfrequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves,if they know that some of the people working for them need longchunks of time to work in.
Our case is an unusual one. Nearly all investors, including allVCs I know, operate on the manager’s schedule. But Y Combinatorruns on the maker’s schedule. Rtm and Trevor and I do because wealways have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she’s gotteninto sync with us.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there start to be more companies likeus. I suspect founders may increasingly be able to resist, or atleast postpone, turning into managers, just as a few decades agothey started to be able to resist switching from jeansto suits.
How do we manage to advise so many startups on the maker’s schedule?By using the classic device for simulating the manager’s schedulewithin the maker’s: office hours. Several times a week I set asidea chunk of time to meet founders we’ve funded. These chunks oftime are at the end of my working day, and I wrote a signup programthat ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hoursare clustered at the end. Because they come at the end of my daythese meetings are never an interruption. (Unless their workingday ends at the same time as mine, the meeting presumably interruptstheirs, but since they made the appointment it must be worth it tothem.) During busy periods, office hours sometimes get long enoughthat they compress the day, but they never interrupt it.
When we were working on our own startup, back in the 90s, I evolvedanother trick for partitioning the day. I used to program fromdinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one couldinterrupt me. Then I’d sleep till about 11 am, and come in andwork until dinner on what I called “business stuff.” I never thoughtof it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day,one on the manager’s schedule and one on the maker’s.
When you’re operating on the manager’s schedule you can do somethingyou’d never want to do on the maker’s: you can have speculativemeetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another.If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it willturn out you can help one another in some way.
Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for thatmatter) have speculative meetings all the time. They’re effectivelyfree if you’re on the manager’s schedule. They’re so common thatthere’s distinctive language for proposing them: saying that youwant to “grab coffee,” for example.
Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you’re on the maker’sschedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyoneassumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager’s schedule.So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, orsend us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we havetwo options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and losehalf a day’s work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probablyoffend them.
Till recently we weren’t clear in our own minds about the sourceof the problem. We just took it for granted that we had to eitherblow our schedules or offend people. But now that I’ve realizedwhat’s going on, perhaps there’s a third option: to write somethingexplaining the two types of schedule. Maybe eventually, if theconflict between the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedulestarts to be more widely understood, it will become less of aproblem.
Those of us on the maker’s schedule are willing to compromise. Weknow we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from thoseon the manager’s schedule is that they understand the cost.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston,and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
Microsoft Yahoo Deal Likely This Week: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance
Posted at finance.yahoo.com
Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Likely This Week
Posted Jul 27, 2009 09:21am EDT by Michael Learmonth in Investing, Internet, Venture Capital, M and A, IPOs
From The Business Insider, July 27, 2009:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Yahoo is close to making Microsoft’s Bing its search provider.
The deal, which would make Yahoo a more credible competitor toGoogle, is likely to be announced this week, and seems likely to bebased on a revenue share, not on a big fat check upfront, as some atYahoo had hoped.
Yahoo’s request for an upfront payment (it is said to have asked forseveral hundred million), in addition to revenue guarantees that wouldamount to billions over the course of the deal, caused a breakdown lastweek in the on-again-off-again talks. But they were revived late onThursday, according to executives with knowledge of the situation.
Execs in Redmond never conceived of the deal as an upfront purchase ofYahoo’s search traffic but as a deal in which Yahoo would becompensated from a share of revenue from the sale of search ads. Yahoowould be allowed to sell search ads on Bing.com as well as its ownsite, giving it more search inventory to sell and making it a biggerplayer in the search sales front. It would also immediately be able tosave millions by not having to maintain its own search infrastructure.
The latest terms of the deal underscore Microsoft’s devotion todeveloping and owning technology vs. selling media. The deal won’t makeit a bigger seller of online advertising but it would allow it toeliminate a search-technology competitor in Yahoo and consolidateroughly 30% of the search marketplace on its own platform — a largeenough share, CEO Steve Ballmer seems to believe, to dent Google’sdominance.
Splitting revenue
In addition to the upfrontpayment, negotiations grew tense last week over the amount of revenueeach side would derive from search-ad clicks…
For the full post, click here.
Also from The Business Insider:
Posted at finance.yahoo.com
Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Likely This Week
Posted Jul 27, 2009 09:21am EDT by Michael Learmonth in Investing, Internet, Venture Capital, M and A, IPOs
From The Business Insider, July 27, 2009:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Yahoo is close to making Microsoft’s Bing its search provider.
The deal, which would make Yahoo a more credible competitor toGoogle, is likely to be announced this week, and seems likely to bebased on a revenue share, not on a big fat check upfront, as some atYahoo had hoped.
Yahoo’s request for an upfront payment (it is said to have asked forseveral hundred million), in addition to revenue guarantees that wouldamount to billions over the course of the deal, caused a breakdown lastweek in the on-again-off-again talks. But they were revived late onThursday, according to executives with knowledge of the situation.
Execs in Redmond never conceived of the deal as an upfront purchase ofYahoo’s search traffic but as a deal in which Yahoo would becompensated from a share of revenue from the sale of search ads. Yahoowould be allowed to sell search ads on Bing.com as well as its ownsite, giving it more search inventory to sell and making it a biggerplayer in the search sales front. It would also immediately be able tosave millions by not having to maintain its own search infrastructure.
The latest terms of the deal underscore Microsoft’s devotion todeveloping and owning technology vs. selling media. The deal won’t makeit a bigger seller of online advertising but it would allow it toeliminate a search-technology competitor in Yahoo and consolidateroughly 30% of the search marketplace on its own platform — a largeenough share, CEO Steve Ballmer seems to believe, to dent Google’sdominance.
Splitting revenue
In addition to the upfrontpayment, negotiations grew tense last week over the amount of revenueeach side would derive from search-ad clicks…
For the full post, click here.
Also from The Business Insider:
Coolness: Amazon’s Acquisitions and Investments, Visualized
Posted at www.techcrunch.com
by Robin Wauters on July 27, 2009
How awesome is this? All credit goes to MeetTheBoss
for creating this visualization (better quality image available when you click through), but it was too good not to share it with you.
It’s a visual representation of Amazon’s acquisitions and investments from 1998 until its most recent purchase of Zappos for a reported $928 million.
The image shows the giant Internet retailer was extremely active in 1999 and 2001 and significantly scaled back investments and buy-outs after the dotcom bubble burst, but has been picking up the pace, particularly since last year.
Who will be next on the map?
Posted at www.techcrunch.com
by Robin Wauters on July 27, 2009
How awesome is this? All credit goes to MeetTheBoss for creating this visualization (better quality image available when you click through), but it was too good not to share it with you.
It’s a visual representation of Amazon’s acquisitions and investments from 1998 until its most recent purchase of Zappos for a reported $928 million.
The image shows the giant Internet retailer was extremely active in 1999 and 2001 and significantly scaled back investments and buy-outs after the dotcom bubble burst, but has been picking up the pace, particularly since last year.
Who will be next on the map?
Google’s thin client distraction
Posted at Geeking with Greg
by Greg Linden
Recently, Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mercury News wrote:
It’s getting harder every day to articulate what Google is. Is it a Web company? A software company? Something else entirely?
It’s not just that it’s hard to see how [Google's operating systems] fit into Google’s stated mission. It’s also that it’s hard to explain to someone exactly what they are, or why they might, or might not, want to use them. Or to communicate why they are different from or better than any other things out there.
These new products have the whiff of engineers building things for other engineers, rather than you and me.
Even worse, these new products have the whiff of executives being unable to let go of their past battles.
For decades, Google CEO Eric Schmidt led Sun and Novell in mostly failed attempts to build thin client computers. At Google, Eric appears to be doing it again.
But Google is not a computer company. It is an advertising company. Google makes its money from advertising.
It is not as if there isn’t enough to do in advertising. Despite Google’s success in making search advertising more useful and helpful, most other advertising remains awful.
Fixing advertising not only would be lucrative, but also it directly fits into Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” At their best, ads provide useful information about interesting products and services. Right now, most contextual and display advertisements are more annoying than useful. It doesn’t have to be that way.
If Google could be the solution to annoying advertising, it could reap all the rewards. Instead, Google is being led off by its generals to fight the last war.
Posted at Geeking with Greg
by Greg Linden
Recently, Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mercury News wrote:
It’s getting harder every day to articulate what Google is. Is it a Web company? A software company? Something else entirely?It’s not just that it’s hard to see how [Google's operating systems] fit into Google’s stated mission. It’s also that it’s hard to explain to someone exactly what they are, or why they might, or might not, want to use them. Or to communicate why they are different from or better than any other things out there.
These new products have the whiff of engineers building things for other engineers, rather than you and me.
Even worse, these new products have the whiff of executives being unable to let go of their past battles.
For decades, Google CEO Eric Schmidt led Sun and Novell in mostly failed attempts to build thin client computers. At Google, Eric appears to be doing it again.
But Google is not a computer company. It is an advertising company. Google makes its money from advertising.
It is not as if there isn’t enough to do in advertising. Despite Google’s success in making search advertising more useful and helpful, most other advertising remains awful.
Fixing advertising not only would be lucrative, but also it directly fits into Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” At their best, ads provide useful information about interesting products and services. Right now, most contextual and display advertisements are more annoying than useful. It doesn’t have to be that way.
If Google could be the solution to annoying advertising, it could reap all the rewards. Instead, Google is being led off by its generals to fight the last war.
Apple’s Tablet Is The Kindle In Technicolor (With Laser Beams)
Posted at TechCrunch
by MG Siegler
While there’s a lot of talk about Apple’s rumored tablet device as it relates to new initiatives from the music industry, the device is undoubtedly a lot larger in scope. The music-angle talk is mostly thanks to the Financial Times all-over-the-place first report yesterday. But a second story also released yesterday with much of the same information, clears things up a bit, and adds a few interesting new nuggets of information.
Here’s the best excerpt:
“It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.
Uh oh, Amazon.
Now, to be fair, the executive completely glosses over any upsides to the current Kindle. Like the fact that its E-ink uses very little power. Or that it can be read in sunlight and is easier on the eyes than a backlit screen, which the Apple device would undoubtedly use. But still, it always seemed inevitable that devices like the Kindle would make the transition from black and white to color, just as televisions and iPods did before it. Now it appears Apple is ready to shove the e-book readers into a world of color before they may be ready.
Thought of another way, this new Apple device is kind of like the kids in Pleasantville from the real-world, full-color future who visit the quaint black-and-white fake television town of the 1950s, and turn it on its head. Things could get ugly — but undoubtedly will be more exciting.
I have a Kindle (the 2nd generation), and I love it. But even after months of using it, when I switch to it after a day of using my iPhone, my initial reaction is to try and touch the screen. I want to flick my finger from side to side to turn book pages, not use the device’s clunky buttons. I want to be able to turn the device and put it into landscape mode, to pinch to zoom in on picture, and for the love of God, please let me use my finger to click on links rather than the awful joystick thing. Those are things that this Apple device will undoubtedly bring to the table.
Oh yeah, and you can be sure it will not only play music, but movies as well. And I’m sure it will browse the web in a way that makes the Kindle really look antiquated.
It’s interesting just how eager the FT report paints book publishers as getting in bed with Apple:
Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about being included in the computer, which could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and a forthcoming device from Plastic Logic, recently allied with Barnes & Noble.
But, as they note, unlike the music industry, which Apple brought to its knees when it got a dominant position, Amazon, not Apple, is the one that threatens to do the same to the book industry right now. In Apple, they likely see a very viable alternative that should ease fears of Amazon doing something like cutting out the middle man (the publishers) and publishing books itself for the Kindle.
If Apple really is able to get this device out by September — which again, seems unlikely for a few reasons, another of which is that according to this new FT report, Apple hasn’t even talked to the film studios about it yet — Amazon is going to have to haul ass to get a response out on the market. Could that mean a Kindle 3, in color, by early 2010?
[photos and video: New Line Cinemas]
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Posted at TechCrunch
by MG Siegler
While there’s a lot of talk about Apple’s rumored tablet device as it relates to new initiatives from the music industry, the device is undoubtedly a lot larger in scope. The music-angle talk is mostly thanks to the Financial Times all-over-the-place first report yesterday. But a second story also released yesterday with much of the same information, clears things up a bit, and adds a few interesting new nuggets of information.
Here’s the best excerpt:
“It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.
Uh oh, Amazon.
Now, to be fair, the executive completely glosses over any upsides to the current Kindle. Like the fact that its E-ink uses very little power. Or that it can be read in sunlight and is easier on the eyes than a backlit screen, which the Apple device would undoubtedly use. But still, it always seemed inevitable that devices like the Kindle would make the transition from black and white to color, just as televisions and iPods did before it. Now it appears Apple is ready to shove the e-book readers into a world of color before they may be ready.
Thought of another way, this new Apple device is kind of like the kids in Pleasantville from the real-world, full-color future who visit the quaint black-and-white fake television town of the 1950s, and turn it on its head. Things could get ugly — but undoubtedly will be more exciting.
I have a Kindle (the 2nd generation), and I love it. But even after months of using it, when I switch to it after a day of using my iPhone, my initial reaction is to try and touch the screen. I want to flick my finger from side to side to turn book pages, not use the device’s clunky buttons. I want to be able to turn the device and put it into landscape mode, to pinch to zoom in on picture, and for the love of God, please let me use my finger to click on links rather than the awful joystick thing. Those are things that this Apple device will undoubtedly bring to the table.
Oh yeah, and you can be sure it will not only play music, but movies as well. And I’m sure it will browse the web in a way that makes the Kindle really look antiquated.
It’s interesting just how eager the FT report paints book publishers as getting in bed with Apple:
Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about being included in the computer, which could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and a forthcoming device from Plastic Logic, recently allied with Barnes & Noble.
But, as they note, unlike the music industry, which Apple brought to its knees when it got a dominant position, Amazon, not Apple, is the one that threatens to do the same to the book industry right now. In Apple, they likely see a very viable alternative that should ease fears of Amazon doing something like cutting out the middle man (the publishers) and publishing books itself for the Kindle.
If Apple really is able to get this device out by September — which again, seems unlikely for a few reasons, another of which is that according to this new FT report, Apple hasn’t even talked to the film studios about it yet — Amazon is going to have to haul ass to get a response out on the market. Could that mean a Kindle 3, in color, by early 2010?
[photos and video: New Line Cinemas]
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
New Barcode Technology from MIT
Posted at 2d code
by Roger
The Camera Culture Group at MIT Media Lab will be demonstrating a barcode replacement at Siggraph 2009 in New Orleans next week. Called Bokode they consist of an LED under a mask and lens. Information is encoded in the light shining through the mask which varies in brightness depending on the angle it is seen from and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera. (Video below).
Post from: 2d code
New Barcode Technology from MIT
Posted at 2d code
by Roger
The Camera Culture Group at MIT Media Lab will be demonstrating a barcode replacement at Siggraph 2009 in New Orleans next week. Called Bokode they consist of an LED under a mask and lens. Information is encoded in the light shining through the mask which varies in brightness depending on the angle it is seen from and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera. (Video below).
Post from: 2d code
New Barcode Technology from MIT
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- Netflix Prize: Contest Closed!
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July 27, 2009
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Jeetu Mirchandani
